Monday, September 12, 2016

Callie's Little Lamb

I wanted to write to remember the very special meaning of Callie's favorite stuffed animal, her white Lamb.  Her Mimi (Justin's mom) gave it to her when she was born.  I can't remember at what age she started to become attached to it, but it was pretty early on.  I thought it was so cute to watch her become attached to a certain stuffed animal especially since Cooper has never been attached to one.  He has gone through different phases of wanting a certain stuffed animal, but never had one that he was attached to for a long period of time.  We never had a name for the lamb, but for some reason we started calling it Lambie and it kinda stuck.


She wanted her lamb close by her all the time.  When she woke up in the mornings, she would usually ask for her lamb after getting her out of her crib.  If she got distracted and didn't ask for it right away, she would definitely be asking for it within the hour.  I would usually find her in her room by her crib trying to pull the lamb through the crib slates.  She would get frustrated that she couldn't get it out, so she would either start fussing or calling for me to help her get it.  If I didn't know where she was and I could hear her fussing, I knew she was in her room trying to get her lamb.  And when I got it for her, she would immediately give it this huge hug and giggle and smile.  It was adorable.



She pretty much got to the point where she couldn't sleep without it.  She slept with a lot of stuffed animals, but she would not go to sleep without her lamb.  Since she got it out of her crib everyday, we never knew where she ended up putting her lamb that day.  We always found it in the strangest places.  When I remembered to search for the lamb before putting her to bed, I would say "Callie, go get Lambie" and there she was off looking everywhere for it.  Of course she couldn't really remember where she last put it, but I always loved watching her look for it.  If I forgot to search for Lambie before putting her to bed, I would put her in her crib and she would sit up and just look at me like "um, aren't you forgetting something?"  I sometimes asked Cooper to get her Lambie for her or go get it myself.  When Justin would put her to bed at night, I always remember him calling out "can you get her Lamb??" And once we brought her Lambie to her, she would hug it and then lay down to go to sleep.  So sweet!


A lot of times she wanted Lambie to sit with her to eat. I never really liked that because I didn't want the Lamb to get food all over it.  But when I would take it away from her, she would get so upset!  It's funny because she wasn't the type of kid that got so mad when you took things from her.  She was laid back in that way.  But when it came to her Lamb, don't even think about taking that away from her.  She also wanted to take her lamb with her the first time she went to the beach.  I again didn't really want her to take it to the beach since I knew it would get sandy and dirty, but in the end it was so darn cute seeing her with her lamb at the beach. She wanted Lambie to enjoy her first beach experience too.



The Lamb is very special to us now.  The funeral director asked if she has a special stuffed animal that we wanted her to be buried with.  At first we told him about the lamb, but then we said we didn't want it to be buried with her as we wanted to keep it.  And we know that it's just her body there that is buried, we know she is with Jesus with all the lambs she wants, so we didn't see a point in burying it with her.  We did bring the lamb to her visitation and to her funeral.  I ended up putting it right in the middle of the flowers on her casket and it looked really sweet.  I wish I had gotten a picture of it.

** Update-thanks to my friend Staci for getting a picture for me....




We decided to have the lamb custom drawn on her stone because it has been so special to her and to us.  From the draft, it turned out really well and looks just like her lamb.  It takes a couple of months for the stone to come in, so it will be awhile before we see it.  It is a nice personal touch to her stone that we will see every time we visit her grave.


The first few weeks after Callie died, Justin had the Lamb sitting on his nightstand so he could see it all the time.  Then one day, Cooper picked up the lamb and said "this is Callie's" and put it back into her crib where he felt the lamb belonged.  So that is where it is now.  I'm not really sure what we will do with the lamb or where we will keep it long term, but I know it is a very special memory that the 3 of us have of her.  

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